


Train Rider

by Fliggy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 13:23:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16556579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fliggy/pseuds/Fliggy
Summary: An ode to the Washington, D.C. metro.





	Train Rider

**Train Rider**

I am in a subway station, waiting for a train.

I have been waiting a long time.

The map says I am on the green line.

I want to get to the red line.

So I must take the blue line

to the silver line

and switch on the purple line.

Each time I look at the map, all the lines switch places.

Except for the yellow line.

Which isn’t even connected to anything.

I think that this subway system stretches on forever.

Each stop has a new map with new edges.

When I try to leave the station, I realize the exit has been paved over.

There are other people here, on the trains, but they look angry when I ask them where they’re going.

And there are some who call themselves the Train Riders.

They have been riding the subway since the dawn of time.

Going nowhere.

Going everywhere.

According to the Train Riders, there is no outside world.

Only the trains are real.

They have accepted their endless wandering.

I envy them.

I join the Train Riders.

I meet an old man who tells me a story of the world above.

He says it is different yet the same.

It is different because of the kittens.

But the same, because

there is an avenue in New York that never ends.

And taxi drivers stuck in that infinite city skyscape.

And passengers behind locked doors.

And everyone trying to get to a kind of place

that could never exist.


End file.
